Well friends, here it is. I've been here a while. I've seen members come and go, made friends here and enemies there, but I have enjoyed it here. I am a longstanding member, and I'm proud of it. And before I go any further, no I'm not leaving the site, this is something that I want to leave you with after my MoM month.
And speaking of people leaving, that seems to have been happening a lot lately, and it saddens me. Members who have been longstanding members such as me, or ones who were new, but quickly found a place here, only to be turned aside by petty differences, or ones who caused trouble and have paid the price. But we have too.
This forum used to be a place for fun, for friendship, and above all, for Halo. Posting was something that we put meaning into, not just put a brief message so we could have a petty hop-up by achieving the status of a Trusted or Dedicated member, to become Purple or Light Gray to lord it over their fellow members. We would put our all into it, nothing held back. I myself barely reached Purple immediately before I became MoM. There was none of the ranting, none of the complaining, people were here because they wanted to be here, not because they had something against us.
And we have suffered greatly from these evils coming into the forum, obliterating its purity and bringing it to face cold harsh reality. But we cannot blame the people who brought it to us. We cannot blame the Mods, the Staff, Twam, we cannot even blame ourselves. In this world there is much that is wrong, but we can't change that. We can only make ourselves the best we can be.
And the Mods, the Staff, and Twam put their every ounce into this site. We have heard them cry out to us that there is only so much they can take. They beg us day by day to respect the site like they do, to make of it what they have, to uphold the virtues and standards that they have worked so hard to put in place. We can have nothing but respect for them. I know that no matter what, they will do what is right for the forum. Should we aspire to be any less great of character? We complain of degradation, harkening back to the "good old days". But those days are over. We are the ones who create the future of the site. New, up and coming, untried and unbroken members. We were once like them. And now they are our future.